First of all, I’m always dubious of a Pastor giving a week long sermon series based on two verses out of the Bible. Secondly, he tends to be one of those Pastors who puts a lot of emotion and emphasis in his voice, which always makes me wonder if my emotions are what’s being appealed to the most.

I won’t go into everything he said, but he did define the essence of Christianity as “Christ being formed in me.” What does that even mean? He paraphrased Rav Yeshua (Jesus), refactoring verse 19 to say, “Form me in their souls, Father.”

What?

Did our Rav actually say that? Did he appeal to the God of Heaven asking that he, the individual Jesus, be “formed” in the souls of his disciples? Again, what does that even mean?

By the end of the fifteen minutes, Pastor Bales didn’t answer the question (actually, he lost me when he said verse 19 was Jesus addressing the “church”). Of course, he’s got Thursday and Friday to go, but I suspect he won’t ever answer that question, at least in a way that makes any sort of sense to me.

This is why I don’t go to a church…well, one of the numerous reasons anyway.

I’ve got enough of a headache just now and this just makes it worse.

I’ve been reading through Paul’s epistle to the Romans as part of my (ideally) daily Bible reading, using the NASB translation. Even though I like this version of the Bible better than most others, it still is horribly biased against the Torah, positioning Jewish devotion to the conditions of the covenants vs. grace.

I wish there were a Bible that really interpreted the apostolic scriptures in a manner more authentically honest to the real intent of the Apostles, particularly Paul since he is the number one club Christianity uses to beat up ancient and modern Judaism.

To be fair, I don’t doubt that Pastor Bales and most religious leaders like him really believe what they say and see their interpretation as totally benign and even beneficial, not only to Gentiles but to (converted) Jews.

I’ve had this conversation a nearly endless number of times with the head Pastor of a little Baptist church I attended for about two years. I finally decided to leave (Wow, has it been three years already?) when the Pastor specifically criticized my theology and doctrine from the pulpit. He didn’t mention my name of course, but I knew he was targeting me.

Again, I’m convinced it was not out of malice and that he was just trying to set me straight in the most convincing way possible since I wasn’t going along with the program in our private conversations.

But it also convinced me that I belong in a church about as much as a cat at a kangaroo convention. I just don’t fit in or, as they say on Sesame Street, “one of these things is not like the other.”

I was reading Psalm 93 from the Stone Edition Tanakh and it made a lot more sense to me:

Hashem has reigned, He has donned grandeur; Hashem has donned strength and girded Himself, even the world of men is firm, it shall not falter. Your throne is established from old; eternal are You. [Like] rivers they raised. Oh Hashem, [like] rivers they raised their voice; [like] rivers they shall raise their destructiveness. More than the roars of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, You are mighty on high, Hashem. Your testimonies about Your House, the Sacred Dwelling, are exceedingly trustworthy; O Hashem, may it be for lengthy days.

Since this is a Psalm about Messianic times and how God’s majesty and grandeur will be recognized by all the people of the world, I’m not hesitant to apply it even to me. God is mighty, He is eternal, His House is Sacred, and He is exceedingly trustworthy. This is so much more straightforward (at least to me) than the confusing pronouncements I keep listening to on Christian radio.

I have no idea what normative Christians hear when they listen to these programs. What do they get out of them? What do they understand? How do they apply phrases like “Christ formed in you” to their lives?

I wanted to ask Pastor Bales something like, “Christ formed in me. That sounds great. I’d really like that. Now what?”

He said it wasn’t what you did that made you a Christian but having Christ formed in your was the essential core of Christianity.

I wonder how that works?

For me, how a relationship with God works starts with continual teshuvah (repentance). Continual turning to God and away from sin. Continual prayer. Continual reading of the Bible. It’s easy to forget that and to put our religious lives on automatic pilot, just cruising through day by day.

Auto-pilot doesn’t bring you closer to God. At best it establishes a steady distance and at worse, that distance steadily increases until God either tries to snap you out of it, or He lets you go do your own thing, waiting until you screw up your life so badly, you call out to Him or abandon Him completely (for He will never abandon you, Jew or Gentile alike).

In the end, I can look to whatever resources I consider trustworthy to increase my understanding, but it still comes down to who I am and what I decide to do about my connection with God. Rav Yeshua is my only conduit since without devotion to my Rav, I have no hope and no promise. It is clear that only through God’s grace and mercy that non-Jews, through the merit of our Rav, are able to partake in the covenant blessings since we are not named members of the New or any other Covenant God has ever made.

Come nearer, God. Help my lack of faith. Heal me and I will be healed, save me and I will be saved for you are my praise.